


kept me warm in a cold place.

by delusionalwithlove



Category: The Front Bottoms
Genre: First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Snowed In
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-29
Updated: 2015-12-03
Packaged: 2018-05-03 23:14:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5310779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delusionalwithlove/pseuds/delusionalwithlove
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>mat and brian get snowed in, and mat is forced to confront some feelings he's not prepared to deal with. or, five times mat and brian sort of kiss, and one time they definitely do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. one.

"Mat. _Mat_." There was a soft insistence to Brian's voice, like he was going against his own instinct to wake Mat up, but he had a good reason. Mat hadn't been asleep, truly, but he'd been dozing on and off for the better part of an hour, and pulling himself out of the hazy depths of half-sleep was especially difficult considering how warm he was, and how lulling the quiet warble of the TV had been.

He stretched, cat-like, under the heavy weight of the blankets they'd piled on themselves, emptying closets and leaving their beds bare to make an enormous nest on the couch, and struggled to extricate himself enough to sit up. At some point, he had tipped over into an awkward position against the arm of the couch and stayed there, trapped by blankets, and his muscles were protesting now. 

"Yeah?" he replied hoarsely, the word more yawn than anything. Brian hadn't moved at all in the hours since they'd settled in to intermittently watch late night television and the winter storm outside, visible through the large living room windows and nearly as novel as any show. They hadn't had snow like this in years, like Jersey had purposefully given them several mild winters in a row to save up for a big blowout.

He turned to check the progress since he'd dozed off, and made a shocked noise when he saw that the snow was piled almost halfway up the living room windows now. It created the illusion that their house was sinking below the earth, and they were already a good two feet under the ground level, by the looks of it.

"Ciaran is Sophia," Brian said gleefully, drawing his attention again. He looked past Mat at the scene outside like he'd forgotten the storm was happening, and raised his eyebrows in mild surprise. "Shit, I don't think we'll be going anywhere for a while. Good thing Tom left that twelve pack here," he added, grinning wolfishly, and Mat couldn't help but smile back as they both remembered the deluge of desperate texts from Tom earlier in the night about his lost beer. He and Ciaran had stopped by after cleaning out the Conoco with what they considered emergency storm supplies - beer, Red Bull, hot Cheetos, Slim Jims, a huge box of donuts, a keyring flashlight, a packet of aspirin, a lighter, and a single tea light candle - and had offered Mat and Brian some of their bounty, beer excluded. 

Apparently best friend code stipulated that sharing beer was not required in emergency situations. Mat thought Tom was probably making that up, but he left Brian to fight that battle, more interested in the Cheetos anyway. They had gotten distracted by one, then three, then seven consecutive games of Madden 16. Tom and Ciaran had hurried out when they realized the storm had already started, and the beer was later discovered under the kitchen table, where Mat suspected Brian had put it, hoping Tom's short attention span would indirectly win it for them.

"That was a crazy stroke of luck." Mat laid on the sarcasm as heavily as he could, but the effect was ruined when the tail end of his sentence caught on a yawn. Brian just grinned more widely, shifting toward him on the couch, and Mat realized he'd pressed his cold feet against the warm curve of Brian's thigh at some point in his sleep.

He drew them back self-consciously as he finally pulled the last bit of twisted blanket off of himself and sat up all the way, swinging his legs the other direction so he could tuck his feet under himself, shivering as he was exposed for the first time in hours. Their heater seemed to only work when it felt like it, and the living room was chilly. "What'd you say, before?"

"Ciaran is Sophia." At Mat's undoubtedly blank expression, Brian nodded his head toward the tv, and Mat noticed that while he was asleep, Friends had been replaced by Golden Girls. When the meaning finally hit his sluggish brain, he let out an involuntary, ugly laugh that was mostly a snort, hiding his slowly colouring face when that made Brian laugh in turn.

"How do you figure?" he asked when he'd reemerged, studying the episode as he rearranged blankets around himself to accommodate his new position, shivering faintly in his thin shirt. Next to him, Brian shifted imperceptibly closer, their shoulders almost brushing underneath the blankets he had pulled to his chin, and Mat observed goosebumps raising along his arms. They definitely needed a new heater.

"Well, he's sneakier than the rest of us combined, he complains about everything, and when he gets mad he scrunches his face up just like her," Brian explained, gesticulating at the screen. From what Mat had gathered, Sophia and Dorothy were on some kind of vacation together, bickering in a pastel-coloured hotel room, Rose and Blanche nowhere to be seen.

"And when you least expect it," Brian continued, "he hits you with the sagest shit you'll ever hear in your life." Mat smiled to himself, nodding softly as he recounted the way Ciaran always delivered his advice, giving the impression that you should've known what to do already, but he was begrudgingly giving you the answers anyway.

"Who's Tom?" he asked, wrestling with a fleece that he was trying to extricate from the crease between the couch cushion and the frame. It pulled free after a few determined tugs, and the sudden release jostled him back against Brian, closing the inch of tentative distance between them. Mat tensed, the fleece twisting in his hands, and then every muscle in his body relaxed against his will, and he let himself lean into the warm, comforting bulk of Brian's sweatshirt-clad side.

"Tom is Rose," Brian said matter-of-factly, sliding down into the couch an inch or two so that Mat's head slotted perfectly onto his shoulder. Mat almost didn't hear him, preoccupied with wondering if they were almost-cuddling on purpose or if it had just happened coincidentally as they settled into the couch. It was old, well-worn, and anyone toward the middle of the cushions naturally tipped against each other.

Brian settled an arm around his shoulders. Intentional, then.

"He's definitely forgetful enough," he said thickly, trying to choke down the feeling of his heart fluttering wildly. He'd never been this comfortable in his life. It was only the panic ripping all his seams apart that was keeping him from immediately falling asleep again, enveloped in the intoxicating warmth that the other seemed to radiate naturally.

"Fortunately for us." Brian shot him another grin, which was dizzying considering how close their faces were, and continued. "Plus he's sweet, and surprisingly helpful when he puts his mind to it. Fuck if I can understand any of his stories, though." Tom had a habit of telling excruciatingly long and winding stories, filled with inane detail, and they rarely had a point to them that anyone but Tom could decipher. If there was enough beer involved, even Tom was left clueless by his own convoluted tales.

On the screen, Rose and Blanche were bickering over a drawing of a tiger wearing a top hat and brandishing a magic wand. Mat had no idea why; he'd been barely paying attention to the plot, eyes fixed on the screen only so he wouldn't stare at Brian the entire time he spoke. Blanche was waving a drawing of a sea otter around in a threatening manner now. Brian was _so_ warm.

"Who're you?" Mat heard his own voice like an afterthought, thick with exhaustion, and he burrowed farther into the blankets, the movement shifting his head on Brian's shoulder so that if he were to crane his neck, he could press his face to the juncture of Brian's throat where it met his collarbone. It took every ounce of willpower in Mat's body not to do so.

"Blanche, obviously," Brian said airily, trying to adopt Blanche's accent and only succeeding in exaggerating his own odd Jersey drawl. "I am footloose and fancy free, after all."

"And stubborn, and ridiculous, and dramatic," Mat added sleepily, grinning when Brian made an offended scoffing noise and ruffled his hair viciously with his free hand.

"Well I _never_ ," he said, again in the worst approximation of a Southern accent Mat had ever heard. "I prefer strongly opinionated, passionate, and theatrically inclined, thank you _very_ much."

"You forgot delusional," Mat muttered under his breath, giggling and trying to duck out of the way when Brian attacked his hair with a new fervor. He didn't get very far, partly due to the strong grip of Brian's arm around his shoulders, and partly because he was reluctant to shift their current position too much. When Brian was satisfied with his retaliation, he settled back into the couch, and Mat melded easily into his side again with relief.

"So that means I'm Dorothy, huh?" he realized with a slight sinking feeling in his stomach, wondering what exactly that meant. Dorothy was the frumpiest and most abrasive one of the group. Brian seemed to sense the ripple of self-consciousness in Mat's tone and shifted the arm he had around Mat's shoulders so he could rub warm fingertips reassuringly against the skin of his upper arm, right where the sleeve of his t-shirt stopped. For some reason, Mat shivered.

"You're a huge grump in the morning. Actually, you're grumpy a lot of the time," Brian started, not making Mat feel any better. "But once you lighten up a bit, you can also be softer and kinder than any of us. You're always taking care of everyone, even when it comes off like you're bossing us around. We'd all lose track of our heads if you weren't there to remind us to keep them on our shoulders."

Brian's voice had taken on a serious quality and had quieted considerably, the tip of his nose brushing against the top of Mat's head as he leaned close. "You're the voice of reason. I- we couldn't function without you."

Mat realized two very concerning things simultaneously. The first was that his heart, whose beat had been increasingly frantic over the course of their conversation, had seemingly clanged to a dead stop. The second was that he was overwhelmingly, ridiculously in love with Brian. And it was _ridiculous_ , because it occurred to him (in the way that very obvious things do) that he should've seen it coming a long way off.

Fuck.

"And I rock a mean muumuu," he said weakly, his voice sounding very small as he broke the heavy silence with the first dumb joke that came to mind. The familiar peals of Brian's laughter as he lost his shit over it settled the anxious twisting feeling in Mat's stomach slightly, even if Brian seemed to be overcompensating for the weird moment between them. It wasn't that funny. Mat giggled a little anyway, a natural and helpless reaction to the sunny sound of Brian's laugh.

On the screen, Rose and Blanche were having an emotional reconciliation over their earlier fight. With another flutter in his chest, Mat realized that Brian's fingers were still moving against his arm, although instead of a reassuring gesture it seemed he was just absently tracing patterns against Mat's skin now, like he wasn't aware that he was doing it. Mat was too aware, warmth spreading out from that spot and pooling in the cold corners of his body that hadn't recovered yet from their brief foray out of the blankets earlier.

"I don't doubt it," Brian murmured, his voice sounding far away. Dorothy was back to arguing with her mother, but he couldn't make out what they were saying, and then they were going out of focus. Mat was vaguely aware that he was falling asleep again, nuzzling his face against Brian's shoulder to get comfortable as he fought a losing battle with his leaden eyelids.

The last thing he registered before sliding headlong into sleep was the brief but tangible brush of lips against his forehead.


	2. two.

He woke up in gentle stages of increasing awareness. The blank darkness behind his eyelids had faded to a cool, blue light. He was hot, almost to the point of being overheated, but it wasn't uncomfortable, and he knew if he kicked the blankets off to cool down, he would soon be shivering. Stupid heater.

Something solid was pressed against his back - the wall that bordered his bed on two sides, probably - and he was on his side, clutching a pillow, one leg thrown over the bunched-up heap of his comforter. Mat stretched, and his thigh shifted a few inches up, nerve endings tingling pleasantly as it met soft, heated skin.

Mat's eyes snapped open.

It took a moment to recognize his surroundings as the living room, bathed in the muted glow of sunlight that reflected off of the snow piled up against the window. He wasn't pressed against the wall in his bedroom, but lying against the back of the couch; if he stretched his leg a little, his toes would brush the arm of the couch that he'd been using for a pillow a few hours before. None of his actual pillows were anywhere to be seen, likely still on his bed.

So what the hell was he cuddling?

Next to him, Brian shifted in his sleep with a breathy sigh that ruffled the hair on the top of Mat's head, and his shirt slid up a little with the motion, exposing more of his smooth, pale stomach to the encroaching press of Mat's thigh.

Oh. It was Brian.

 _Don't panic_ , Mat thought to himself, panicking. He wracked his brain trying to remember how they had gotten there, a few disjointed, dreamlike memories flashing through his mind.

Brian murmuring that it was late and they should go to bed. The flicker of the television as it turned off, and then back on when they realized they couldn't see without it. Brian swaying as he stood next to the couch, barely awake, trying to pull his own comforter out of the mass of blankets. Mat lying back lengthwise on the couch so he could kick off his jeans, with the intention of being able to collapse into his bed in just a t-shirt and boxers.

Mat then drifting back into sleep like that, his jeans caught around one ankle. Brian helpfully untangling them the rest of the way and dropping them on the floor before covering Mat up. Then, having failed to free his comforter and unwilling to freeze to death in his blanketless bed, nudging Mat against the back of the couch so he could lie down too. Mat grasping his shirt and making unintelligible, impatient noises until Brian got the hint, and slung his arm back around Mat's shoulders so that his head was pillowed comfortably on Brian's chest.

It felt like they hadn't moved in hours. Mat was used to at least a little bit of tossing and turning in his own bed, waking up to the covers tangled around him or his neck sore from ending up in a strange position. With the exception of wrapping himself around Brian like an octopus in his sleep ( _fuck_ ), Mat hadn't shifted an inch. He could feel indentations on his face from Brian's shirt, like sheet marks, and he was suddenly terrified at the possibility that he might have drooled on him.

A quick check revealed that he hadn't, but it didn't do much to comfort him, or slow the racing of his heart. Mat lay there for a long moment, feeling himself move with Brian's gentle breaths, and considered the state of his life.

He had just slept with Brian. Well, on him. This wasn't the first time by far, but it was definitely the first time they had ended up _cuddling_. He was in love with Brian, and considering that he was able to think that without having a full-blown panic attack, he had been for some time, and it just hadn't occurred to him until now what that feeling was twisting in his gut and making his heart do somersaults.

The trouble was, Mat seemed to spend his life waiting for significant moments to explode dramatically into being, playing out like the romanticized scenes of self-discovery in every sappy movie on the planet, which is why they always caught him off guard. The last time he'd been so shaken, he had realized he was bi in the middle of a Japanese steakhouse, and had been so preoccupied that a sudden burst of flames from their tabletop grill had almost singed his eyebrows off.

This was at once too gradual, and too sudden. It had happened without him noticing, the plates of their friendship shifting imperceptibly, tectonically under the surface, and the resulting earthquake was now, to put it eloquently, fucking up all his shit. And now they were snowed in for the foreseeable future, and there was no way to avoid Brian until he could figure out how to deal with this.

In summary, he was completely screwed.

Mat knew himself too well. He would give it away somehow; he was never good at keeping his own secrets. If he managed not to blurt it out, as he was prone to do, Brian would figure it out, reading it plainly on his face and in his body language. He would say something weird or forget how to use his limbs normally, and Brian would get suspicious, and the embarrassing truth would come out.

They would spend the rest of this storm either trapped in a horrible, awkward limbo until they could get away from each other, or more likely, Brian would let him down in the kindest way possible and then resume being cool with him, because Brian could find a way to be cool with a man-eating alligator sitting on the couch next to him. Mat would implode from heartbreak and mortification, and start avoiding him, and run their friendship into the ground all by himself.

He couldn't tell which would hurt more, but he saw no other way this would play out. There was no choice but to keep this a secret as long as he could manage, and with any luck, his feelings would work themselves out on their own and let him fade back seamlessly into their friendship, like he'd never entertained the thought of anything else.

Mat still hadn't moved. It felt like he had been crafted to fit perfectly against Brian's side, tucked neatly under his arm, even the awkward juts of rib and hip bones slotting together comfortably as Brian breathed, deep and slow, and Mat breathed with him. He never wanted to leave.

He was in _so_ much trouble.

With some difficulty, Mat untangled his limbs as gently as possible, lifting himself up on one hand and one knee (the knee that hadn't been traitorously hiked up around Brian's hips a moment ago) until he could plant his other hand on the arm of the couch above Brian's head for balance. His legs were just short enough that he couldn't comfortably get a foot on the floor yet, so he planted the offending knee in the space between Brian's for support while he figured out his next move.

Large hands gripped his hips as he shuffled toward the edge of the couch, thumbs pressing into the sensitive skin just above his hipbones, and Mat was so startled that he fell forward a few inches before he could stop himself, his precarious balance slipping.

"G'mornin," Brian said groggily, squinting up at him with the expression of someone who knows that they're waking up, but doesn't want to, so they try to trick their brain into shutting back down by opening their eyes as little as possible. He didn't seem to notice that Mat was now straddling his thighs, or that he was holding Mat firmly there. It must have simply been a well-honed reflex, some subconscious desire to delay a girl he thought was trying to sneak out of his bed, and if Mat hadn't been frozen with shock, he might've had time to feel jealous.

"Morning," Mat replied, his voice a few octaves higher than normal. He hoped that it came off like a sleepy hoarseness, and not the shrill tone of a person on the edge of freaking out.

"Where y'going?" Brian's words always slurred together for at least an hour after he woke up, and it had taken some time of living together to be able to recognize and separate his syllables.

"Uh, to- bathroom. To the bathroom. To shower." He hadn't actually been planning on that, but now that he'd said it, it sounded like a good idea. The shower was the only refuge he had in the house, the only place he had guaranteed solitude to think, unless he hid in the back of his closet, but the irony of that was too much to stomach.

"Cool, lem'know when 's free." It took Brian a solid thirty seconds and a bit of careful shifting from Mat to realize that he needed to let go if anything was going to get done, and Mat nearly toppled off the couch in a cascade of blankets with relief, catching himself at the last second and making a beeline for the bathroom.

With the door locked behind him, Mat could breathe a little more easily, but his pulse was still racing, beating a pattern against the inside of his chest. He slung his t-shirt onto the floor and leaned forward to examine himself in the mirror, wondering if the actual outline of his heart would be visible with each thunderous beat. It wasn't (and never would be, unless he achieved his childhood dream of becoming Bugs Bunny), but it was doing its best to break through his skin. Which, as he was now reminded, bore a tattoo of Brian's face directly over his heart.

The symbolism of that now seemed even more suspicious. How fucking long had he been in love with Brian Sella without noticing? _Years_? Jesus _fucking_ Christ.

Disgusted with himself, Mat wrenched open the shower curtain and turned the water on before kicking his boxers viciously in the direction of his shirt. He stepped under the scalding spray and let out a sigh that he felt like he had been holding for months, little ripples of relief spreading through him as he felt his muscles starting to relax, hoping his mind would follow.

Brian's hands had been expansive and hot against him, even through a layer of fabric, the minute flexing of his fingers making every nerve in the vicinity light up with interest.

Mat reached down, and with a single twist, turned the temperature knob on the shower all the way to cold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 12/28: i'm sorry for the lack of updates. i had a plan to finish this whole fic well before christmas, but my cat/emotional support animal went missing on the 11th and i've been a depressed wreck unable to focus on anything for three weeks. i'm planning to pick this back up soon and finish it since i'm starting to feel a little better and take interest in things again, but i can't make any promises as to a timeline. thanks for understanding!


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